I have seen very few terrorists ever referred to as crazy, by either their supporters or their victims. And if we’re talking about terms, then with regards to people who wish for reasons of their own to kill me or people like me, I’d prefer rational to reasonable.
Hamas, and other terrorists are entirely rational. Their goals are stated and public knowledge, and their behaviour entirely in keeping with those goals. They may have miscalculated with the recent outrage, but they may on the other hand have figured their deaths were worth it as part of some larger game to achieve their goals. I think we in the secular West don’t really get that they genuinely believe that heaven awaits them, and it’s better than the life they lead.
What I think the response to this should be is whether we are confident in our own morality, our customs and beliefs, our history and civilisation, to know good from evil, and the understandings regarding those concepts that have underpinned our development to this day. If we can say we know that, then we can decide that their behaviour is evil, and act accordingly. Or failing that, be clear-sighted enough to know that, given what they believe and want, that their continued existence is an existential threat, a mortal threat to our societies and to our children. And act accordingly.
I’m of the opinion that Israel is a sort of pit canary for Western civilization as a whole. An outpost of Judeo-Christian values planted in unpromising ground but surviving and thriving nonetheless. Mine is of course just one opinion among many, and it’s a clumsy metaphor perhaps, but I think while Israel and its values stand, then so can ours. If we let this death cult overrun it because we don’t have the stomach to fight, or worse still to watch someone else (the IDF) do it for us, then we too are done for, and probably in a generation or two.
They say evil only prevails when good does nothing. So are we good? Are our values sound? There are people who wish to kill us, and those who share our values. If we are good, and someone is murderously opposed to us, driven to murderous frenzies of rape and baby-killing, then whether they are evil or not is semantics. And we’d better not think they’re crazy, or we’ll underestimate them.
Very well described. Eagleton sets up a straw man with his “crazy” argument, once again misjudging the innate capacity of citizens (or the vast majority) to understand the rationale behind those who commit atrocities.
I do not know. What would you call a belief that if you die a martyr you get 12 virgins and an everlasting fountain of wine that does not give you a hangover
You know, I do wonder what’s in it for the female suicide bombers. I mean, you blow yourself up in a crowded market place and for what? A dozen men who don’t have a clue in bed…
I’ve every sympathy for them wanting the booze though after a life of an islamist wife. The miracle is they can wait that long.
People are people. We are much more similar to the Palestinians than I think you allow.
I would call your citing of Paradise’s rewards as a false characterisation. Most Palestinians are not fundamentalist Muslims. There are many many Christians who believe similar nonsense. The idea that one has to be fundamentalist Muslim to be upset about losing one’s homeland by being driven off it by force by those who have immigrated en masse should be tested in some Western country. No people would react with equanimity. I cite Dresden and Hiroshima and the carpet bombing of Afghanistan as examples of how people of my culture chose to react when threatened. Oh, but that’s different? Is killing people remotely with a drone or a bomb more or less moral than slitting their throats in person?
I question the exchange rate. Why is it always so egregiously high? 7:1 or worse.
The 1400 killed 7-Oct-2023 is said to be in retaliatory revenge for the 200+ Palestinians including 47 children killed by Israeli settlers and army this year before that date. And now today 10,000 are said to have died in Gaza. If that’s an exaggeration as some do claim we nevertheless know it will soon be 10,000.
200 x 7 = 1400
1400 x 7 = 10,000
People are people. We are much more similar to the Palestinians than I think you allow.
There are some objective facts in international relations and law. one type of fact is geopolitical: which people/state is close to another. Another fact is being a member of the international society of states: the society is a rarefied club. It has about 200 members. Israel is a member. Thereby, it has rights and duties. One of the key rights is the right to defend itself. Hamas is not a member of that society. it does not have the right to make war. It may claim that it does. It does not. So what does it do when it uses violence, in the case of October 7, extreme violence. The correct term is terror. it uses terror. Terror is a means of war. So it is at war, but it does not have the right to wage wars. Its key assertion is the liquidation of Israel.
The conclusion is simple: Hamas is a terrorist organisation. Terrorist organisations are proscribed by the society of states. Any state or organisation which supports a terrorist organisation by word or by deed is acting outside the bounds of international law. There is only one possible outcome here: Hamas must be liquidated.
Hamas is also a political party that’s rise closely mirrors every other Authoritarian State Apparatus that fills a vacuum after Socialism fails. Palestine like Weimar was a Socialist State.
The pattern repeats without exception everywhere Marxist/Leninist parties seize power and destabilize everything. After the chaos and regardless of whether the Marxist Leninist Ideology is replaced; the State seizes control of the means of Production and imposes something akin to martial law.
If the West is going to intervene to “aid” destabilized countries, it needs to stop propping up Socialist replacement parties because the same pattern of Famine Economics followed by Military Dictatorships will just repeat itself.
I might agree with you about Marxist-Leninism, but Hamas has absolutely nothing to do with socialism. Why is it that some people on this forum seem to be able to only hold onto one concept?
I didn’t say they did. I said they filled a vacuum. Read about Fatah, the party in power before Hamas. It’s a member party in the Socialist International.
The reason why bbc and cbc and the like don’t call them terrorists is because it’s too close to the home of what they do. I don’t mean the act, I mean the propulsion of the act into the consciousness of the populations. If they don’t want to call them terrorists, why don’t they embed journalists in the units?
Christian values killed 6 million Jews, homosexuals, Romas, and others. Christians killed 8,000 defenseless Muslims in Srebenica. Christian Falangists, under the protection of the Israeli army, killed 3,000 defenseless Palestinians in Shara and Shatila. And that is just a recent sampling, without going back to other examples of Christian genocide. It always amazes me that some brainless upper class twits manage to invoke Western and Christian moral superiority without any regard for the historical record.
Israel, from a threatened small settlement, has become an arrogant, racist, militaristic and theocratic aparheid society where recently half its population demonstrated against the government.
The only hope is that younger, more educated voters are more critical and rejecting the knee-jerk pro-Israeli attitudes of their seniors. We cannot convince our opponents – we can just wait for them to die out.
Last time I looked, it was the Third Reich and N@zis who killed 6M Jews plus many others in the Final Solution, driven by a warped ideology that was NOT Christian. The N@zis didn’t espouse Christian values. They also killed plenty of Christians who opposed them, including Bonhoeffer.
And to call modern day Israel “theocratic” is ridiculous on its face.
Dear Communist Professor- To imply the Nazis were driven by Christian values is bordering on intellectual insanity. They practiced Theosophy which is an Esoteric Mystical Philosophy based on “root races.” They were also heavily influenced by Nietzsche who was obviously a hard core Atheist.
Why don’t you release your sources of these “genocides” while you’re throwing around Marxist inferences to the evil bourgeois class and teaching a class on Postcolonial studies. We get it, the society to which you belong are Oppressors and you are fighting for the Oppressed from within the Consumer Capitalist system that has so oppressed everyone.
Is one not able to put oneself in the Palestinians’ shoes? Would not the hot headed amongst us (and it seems there are some here) not react similarly? The idea (among some here) is that the Palestinians were unmanageably evil *before* they were driven off the land they had occupied for many centuries, since before they converted to Islam, some of them from Judaism some of them from Christianity to which they had converted from Judaism. It is difficult to know what to do with the dog chained in the corner of the yard. Whose yard? I don’t wonder why the dog is mad.
(1) It’s too convenient and also too much of a coincidence to think that we’re always on the unambiguously correct side. I think too many of those who think we’re on the right side here are unable to identify anytime we acted improperly: There’s no questioning of how this ugly situation evolved.
(2) That one side is evil does not make the other side good.
Even severely personality disordered psychopaths like Hamas et al,, who put Gazan children on roofs of buildings in which they’re holed up because they know that the IDF will not bomb them, and teach their little children to want to grow up to die while killing Jews, are rational and hate-filled as much as were the Nazis. The Nazis also terrorised Jewish communities and tortured and burned them alive. But few cheered on that Nazi barbarism and depravity as openly as is happening now in the west. I’d like to be able to wonder why that is, but unfortunately it’s as plain as a pikestaff …
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Terrorism is the use or threat of violence for political ends. Pretty much all states use terrorism from time to time.
Monsters are not crazy, they’re “evil” or psychopathic”, and your rebuttal it itself a naive straw man, derived from the fact that you have no idea what you’re talking about.
In fact, terrorists are routinely described as monsters, evil etc – I listened to that narrative for the first 35 years of my life, on a daily basis.
I grew up in the Troubles and was subjected to a load of one-eyed, comically-biased piffle masquerading as the news, on a daily basis. The narrative of my childhood was as follows:
“Once upon a time, there was a happy land called Northern Ireland. Then one day, for no reason, a bunch of people became evil psychopaths and started killing people out of blood lust. We must never negotiate with these terrorists. The End.”
I’ve met plenty of people in S Dublin and in England who still essentially cleave to that fairytale.
Despite the angry voices commenting below, the author has a point. ***Officially, Hamas are deemed to be irrational, and to have no arguable case.*** That is why Sunak said there are “not two sides” to this matter. That is, the only legitimate position is to be pro-Israel. No other position is allowed – according to the Prime Minister of the UK.
So while the West may not describe Hamas as monsters, it very clearly views them as having no logical position, while also describing them as “animals”.
Irrational animals? Monsters?
Not much difference there and the author has a point.
Kevin Hansen
1 year ago
“But you can explain why Hitler came to power, or why Boris Johnson exudes an air of entitlement, without justifying it.”
Hitler and Boris Johnson in the same sentence in an article about terrorism. Totally rad Terry! What a superannuated Student Grant (nod to Viz) he is.
Makes one wonder who’s actually in the elite group of people who are justified in having an air of entitlement, doesn’t it ? I’d have said “no one”. But Prof. Eagleton seems to knopw better.
He’d also do well to reflect on the fact that Johnson was removed from power in a quite peaceful and rather farcical way without causing millions of deaths. And accepted his fate.
Laura Creighton
1 year ago
It is entirely possible to be evil and mad at the same time, indeed if you study people with mental illnesses you will find it is quite common. It is possible to be so mad that one is incapable of making a moral choice, but this is rare. Combining madness and evil is not. Again, and again, and again we see that if you decide to cosy up to evil and make a place for it in your life, the evil will eventually drive you mad. But that just means you are now mad in addition to being evil. Becoming mad is not a ‘get to do evil blamelessly card’, as all the good people who are struggling with madness but not evil can attest.
the desire for independence and self-determination runs as deep in nations as it does in adolescents. It is one of the ideas of our time. Nothing is easier in the modern world than killing people; but defeating an idea is a much harder business, and if you destroy it in one form it is likely to crop up again in another.
I disagree. I know of a once-independent nation whose desire for self-determination is so hard-pressed that it looks about to expire. It has suffered mass immigration to historically unprecedented levels: fully a fifth of it’s residents were born overseas, and their birthrates are higher than those of the indigenous population. It’s own government seems to be at ease with this, while being patently unable to solve problems such as housing and energy and cost-of-living crises. Its national broadcaster portrays this situation as being desirable, and never misses an opportunity to criticise that nation’s history and culture. Schools and universities teach values inimical to that history and culture; a young person in what used to be the conservative middle classes is considered deviant if they are not hostile to the best of what their country has offered, and few of them have an extensive knowledge of their country’s artistic and cultural achievements. Having voted for exiting a federation which it did not vote to join, the population were openly thwarted by a hostile political class who were utterly shameless about their contempt for ordinary people.
I don’t see many signs of this desire for independence and self-determination. To speak approvingly of such things is to be labelled as racist, xenophobic, or worse. I wonder how much more that poor little country can take.
Last edited 1 year ago by Simon Neale
Martin Bollis
1 year ago
Though clearly an apologist for Hamas and subversion generally, he makes the perfectly valid point that morality is the wrong lens through which to view the exercise of power.
Our choice is between the way of life we enjoy, built on Enlightenment values founded on broadly Christian moral concepts, or some of the others on offer. A theocracy, mafia clan, centralised big brother or any of the other semi anarchic offerings don’t appeal to me.
These other ways of life, in word and deed, despise ours, yet envy it’s fruits. We need to get more robust about defending ourselves.
I thought this particularly revealing:
“The ruling social order can take an onslaught on particular institutions; what it can’t abide is the subversion of meaning itself through some monstrous act of absurdity.”
Almost a definition of the progressive left’s objective in marching through the institutions.
Johann Strauss
1 year ago
It seems to me that the author is viewing Hamas and the other Islamist terrorist groups through the wrong lens. That is, he is viewing them through the lens of 20th/21st century western civilization. But Hamas and the other Islamist groups are not living in the 20th/21st century but in the 7th century. What Hamas just did was barbaric, but no more barbaric than the Viking raiders looting, raping and pillaging along the East coast of England. The west has advanced since those medieval times, but the Islamists have not.
What is particularly tragic in the West is the support for Hamas on so many University campuses and by so many groups, such as the LBGTQ+ community, who would be the first to be thrown off the roofs of high rises in Gaza. In other words, these people have no clue as to what they are dealing with or any idea what Hamas et al. are all about, let alone the fact that Hamas et al. do not share a single thought or concept in common with these do-gooder western, progressive, so-called liberal groups who have clearly lost their moral compass.
The progressive view is Intersectionality. They view all conflicts as being between Oppressors and the Oppressed. And they side with the ones they see as oppressed. It’s a simplistic view. In general the darker the skin of a group the more likely they are to be viewed as oppressed.
AC Harper
1 year ago
But there may be a subtle distraction in the argument. According to Wikipedia:
Hamas continued to advocate Palestinian armed resistance, won the 2006 Palestinian legislative election, gaining a majority in the Palestinian Legislative Council, and took control of the Gaza Strip from Fatah following a civil war in 2007. Since then, it has run Gaza as a de facto autocratic and one-party state.
If you regard HAMAS as a state actor rather than ‘mere’ terrorists then HAMAS are guilty of war crimes.
David Giles
1 year ago
Absolutely no need to fret over ‘evil versus mad’ at all. Norman Geras used the term “diseased mind” to describe terrorists and also their apologists, who keep as quiet as possible about their acts of evil, or grudgingly acknowledge them only so to wax lyrical and angry about “colonialism” or “state terror”.
Terry Eagleton is just such a diseased mind.
Mr Giles is obviously into ad hominid attacks.
I’ll let P C Roberts describe what Giles stands for and is:
How much evidence is required before it is clear that Western Civilization is empty of integrity, judgment, reason, morality, empathy, compassion, self-awareness, truth, empty of everything that Western Civilization once respected?
All that is left of the West is insouciance and unrestrained evil.”
~Dr Paul Craig Roberts, former Undersecretary Of Treasury, Reagan Administration
Kirk Susong
1 year ago
The sooner Terry Eagleton gets to retirement, the better for whatever intellectual legacy he has left. This is a rubbish essay, composed in the classic ‘public intellectual’ fashion – a helter-skelter combination of cliches, truisms, sweeping judgments, unfounded assertions, and idiosyncratic asides.
Eagleton’s worry about the distinction between evil and madness, or between terrorism and ‘collateral damage’, would (you’d think) remind him of Wittgenstein. When you seek to understand what a word means, you must remember that examples come before definitions, not the other way round. And so, too, do our moral categories exist to serve our moral judgments, not the other way round.
Hamas perfectly captures both madness and evil, both unauthorized terrorism and authorized mayhem. Whether you call them evil or mad, terrorists or soldiers, is irrelevant. They must be stopped, dead or alive.
Sure: people living in Gaza are not hostages (nor are they prisoners). Or if you want to be witty, they are hostages of Hamas not of Israel. If Gazans support Hamas’ terrorist actions, then they rightly bear some (some) responsibility for them. If they do not support Hamas’ terrorist actions, they must remove Hamas and convince Israel they’ll stop attacking it. Where is the evidence of Gazans rebelling against their evil overlords?
According to PCPSR, the vast majority of Gazans (70-80%) have no interest in emigrating from Gaza and support Hamas and its violence towards Israel. The responsibility for the death of Gazan children lies at the feet of Gazan parents who have put them in harms way and have taught them to hate Jews and to support and glorify terrorists killing Jews.
This entire debate reminds me of Genesis 18:16… just how many righteous Gazans must we identify, to let the evil ones off the hook?
Seems a bit late in history to “go biblical” in such an ancient, Sodom and Gomorrah kind of way.
So the responsibility for the deaths of thousands of children killed within a few weeks in no way lies with those who kill them?
That sounds perilously close to the sick jihadist and far/fashionable leftist claim that Israel bears the sole responsibility for the slaughter and hostage-seizure of its innocents on 10/7.
“So the responsibility for the deaths of thousands of children killed within a few weeks in no way lies with those who kill them?”
“In no way”? I don’t know what that means. “In what way” are you talking about?
In this debate, when in doubt, point to the children. Not the Jewish children who are intentionally attacked by Hamas, but the Palestinians children – who are deliberately put in harms’ way by Hamas. Yet somehow this is Israel’s fault. I don’t get it.
Since I know you are not dumb, I can only conclude you are being deliberately dishonest or obtuse.
If someone puts children in harms way and you still pull the trigger, is that avoidable death in no way your fault? Too complex or subtle for ya’?
Morality and needful restraint don’t disappear during wartime. Quite the opposite. You must know that. It has to do with degree and balance, things which you seem to purposely ignore here.
Weird – I was going to say you were the one being deliberately obtuse. The point of asking what “in some way” means is that I have no idea how to answer the question without knowing what you think is at stake in it.
I am sure Israeli generals ordering attacks to protect their own children will be very sad if those attacks kill Palestinian children. But they would be even sadder if they did not order those attacks, resulting in more deaths of Israeli children.
Why is it that the “but the children!” side of this debate never can quite articulate what Israel is supposed to do? It’s like Hamas’ immoral tactic of deliberately endangering Gazan children is a ‘get out of jail free’ card for their immoral tactic of deliberately killing Israeli children. According to my moral intuitions, it is Hamas not Israel that has a callous, immoral indifference towards the lives of innocent children.
(“But the children!”)
Weird that you require so much clarification and pretend that there’s no argument on the other side of some black-and-white divide.
Allow humanitarian aid to pass through more freely. Don’t cut off water and power to the entire population. Don’t kill one Hamas fighter at the “collateral” expense of 20 or 100 onlookers. Is the Israeli military and the far-right government in charge being sufficiently mindful of these things? Were Netanyahu and his Likud party been handling things well before the 10/7 massacre? I don’t think so. What do you think?
I don’t pretend this is an easy situation that can be handled without major force, but it’s like you acknowledge nothing between non-engagement and indiscriminate destruction of whole neighborhoods.
Israeli children and adults will not be made safe when more Gazan kids are radicalized and both sides resort all the more readily–in fear and rage–to dismissing one another as infidels, barbarians, etc.
If it ever did: It will no longer work to obliterate a people and scorch and salt the earth afterward. People remember. Violence comes back around to who use it too freely, or with cruelty and delight. And to their blameless descendants.
“Going biblical” in the hellish, almost unrestrained sense you apparently mean is the exact wrong approach. Go New Testament biblical instead.
“Is the Israeli military and the far-right government in charge being sufficiently mindful of these things? Were Netanyahu and his Likud party been handling things well before the 10/7 massacre? I don’t think so. What do you think?”
First, thanks for your continuing engagement. Second, I think this quote goes to the heart of our apparent dispute. I have absolutely no personal knowledge of the strategic and tactical dilemmas facing the IDF. (I suspect you don’t either.)
What I have is a level of sympathy and trust with the people who adhere to Western civilizational norms – and very low levels of trust with the people who don’t. The Israelis have a free press, open elections, civilian control of the military, etc. Hamas on the other hand has no free press, no elections, military control of civilian life, etc.
It is obviously ridiculous to think we Internet residents can micromanage strategic and tactical choices in a conflict going on around the world. But we can identify the groups which are more likely to be held accountable, to follow the right ethical norms, to limit their actions as necessary.
To put it another way, the people who hide weapons caches in hospitals have not earned my trust when they report on civilian casualties from those hospitals.
I trust the Israelis to balance the imperative of protecting themselves with the simultaneous if secondary goal of protecting civilian Gazans. I don’t trust Hamas at all in any way whatsoever.
“A helter-skelter combination of cliches, truisms, sweeping judgments, unfounded assertions, and idiosyncratic asides”…You’ve captured Eagleton’s prevailing approach quite well. But if you look past his anarchic heart, there’s some substance or at least “food for thought” there too.
Yoram Mimoun
1 year ago
It’s indeed true that behind the terrorist attacks lays a purpose and that not seeing it by animalizing the terrorists is an error that prevent us from knowing who we fight, but the conclusion that we should reach from that point should not be to put them as a symptom of a legitim problem that should be resolve (even if we condemn the means used by the supporters of the cause), but to disqualify the cause in itself, because the means says a lot about the very nature of the claims. The most revealing example is the fact that almost all terrorist movement has sympathy for communist nationalism or are linked with communist movement by a means or another. And the reason for that is straightforward: if the society for which you fight has at is pinnacle values of freedom and democracy you will never slaughter civilians, and if at the contrary you consider your cause as more important than civilian lives your movement has no moral justification at all and should by crush.
Last edited 1 year ago by Yoram Mimoun
Tyler Durden
1 year ago
Hamas and Isis before them have taken it upon themselves to act as a decivilising force against the universal values they perceive to be assumed by the West. Hence they mobilise the force of the Ottoman Empire against Christian Europe, wary that using the Jews as scapegoats will always be popular in Europe too.
This is why the postmodern reaction (supporting Hamas ‘decolonisation’ barbary) in the US is most shocking of all. It speaks of a generation desensitised to violence, lacking any wider moral context and locked into the logic of these demented digital tribes.THAT is a form of madness.
Charles Hedges
1 year ago
There has always been people who enjoy inflicting pain on others, namly sadistic murderers. Terrorist groups including the French Revolution succeed because they leaders persuade the sadistic murders that they can indulge their joy in savage blood thirsty and cruel actions for some higher, morally superior purpose. Did McGuiness and Adams ever torture anyone to death, perhaps not; but they certainly enabled others to do so.
I read a book by Terry called ‘Evil’ which was very interesting and full of ideas, but nonetheless basically an Apologia for the horrors of Communism by setting up Hitler as the ultimate baddie in history and Nazism as the ultimate evil (something Stalin spent his life doing and which Putin still does all the time).
We’ve been stuck in this lefty good/ right bad dichotomy ever since 1945 and it’s skewed everything in our societies to the point that now, when the terms are almost meaningless, they’re still influencing debate and ways of thought.
Just like Judaeo Christian culture, they’re part of the air we breathe but we don’t even realise it.
N Satori
1 year ago
The lesson of this history is that the desire for independence and self-determination runs as deep in nations as it does in adolescents.
Now there’s a bit of sentimental, pro-rebel, Lefty claptrap. Don’t they just love to lecture us on the “lessons of history” as though history were a gigantic educational project laid on for the benefit of Left-leaning professors.
Questions: Independence from who and what? Self-determination for which self (or selves) exactly? Post-revolutionary euphoria soon evaporates as the former rebels become the new rulers and the plodding, unglamorous work of administering the brave new society must proceed. Then, predictable as nightfall, come accusations of a revolution betrayed. The remedy? A true revolution of course!
By the way, if anyone is interested, Anna Geifman in her two works: Death Orders: The Vanguard of Modern Terrorism in Revolutionary Russia and Thou Shalt Kill: Revolutionary Terrorism in Russia 1894-1917 provides greater insight into the cult of terrorist violence than the explanations (but not excuses!) of Eagleton.
Post-colonial revolution independent countries are doing quite well, thank you.
Tony Taylor
1 year ago
Not all. Some are just too stupid to know they are complete morons.
G K
1 year ago
I’m not sure how important the “moral hook” is. Be it a junky or a professional criminal, the moral duty of the state is to eliminate or securely isolate that individual.
Consider this: how many of the junkies and crackheads living on the street are there because they’ve used up the goodwill and patience of their family and friends? Here’s an idea: don’t let ‘child behaviorists’ and their fellow pill pushers get your kids hooked on Adderall and other drugs and maybe they won’t be as inclined to heroin use later on in life.
An idea that I’ve never heard of before, despite working in the field for 30 years; and I have not come across a single paper or research indicating a link. Like you though, I generally do not agree with psychotropic medicines for children. BTW – child psychiatrists (medical Drs) are the prescribers; behaviourists are psychologists who seek to improve the kids naturally by changing…..their behaviour.
What is an enormous problem is the over-prescription of opioids by American doctors, driven by Purdue Pharma – that has lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of ‘ordinary’ Americans – those who could well be your friends, family, colleagues, and who were ‘good citizens’ before the drugs, given to them by their friendly neighbourhood dr, took over.
Here’s an idea – for those types who are using up the goodwill of friends & family, those who are really far gone – the thieving junkies – just prescribe them the opioids they want. They are very cheap, and this would do away with their need to ‘find’ hundreds of dollars a day to fuel their habit. It’s estimated that a full blown addict needs to steal around £100,000 worth of goods each year to fund their habit – and you can add the police, and insurance bills on top of that.
Appreciate the rational counterpoint. I get the distinction you make between behaviorists and psychiatrists, though I imagine that there’s some collusion in getting minors hooked on drugs, you tell me. I don’t know if giving very young children drugs leading to them becoming junkies is so much an idea, it just seems like a logical progression to me. As for the thieving junkies, I feel no compassion at all. They’re a drain, an ongoing threat, they’re turning major cities into open air sewers, there are multiple accounts of assault and murder by some of them, why should the rest of us fund them?
Last edited 1 year ago by starkbreath
Gordon Arta
1 year ago
Define ‘terrorist’, and define ‘crazy’. Not all horrific acts are designed to achieve ‘terror’, not all of those so intended are to serve a purpose beyond the gratification of the perpetrator. Of those that are intended to serve a purpose, the purpose, and its alternatives, define whether it is ‘terrorism’. As for ‘crazy’, is the person who thinks they hear voices telling them to kill more or less crazy than the person who actually does hear voices, but those voices are religious fanatics who themselves think they hear the voice of an imaginary ‘god’?
Exactly! The premise that “terrorist” and “crazy” are mutually exclusive is nonsensical. Crazy is not a scientific term, and it’s very imprecise. If we say that crazy is a colloquialism and synonym for mental illness, and a terrorist is a criminal who is motivated by ideology and political aims, I don’t see why the two cannot co-exist in an individual. Anders Breivik, the Norwegian terrorist who killed 77 people in 2011 is a perfect example. He had political objectives, but he is also a paranoid schizophrenic; if that isn’t crazy, I don’t know what is! I recommend perusal of the following journal article, which goes into more detail about the connection between psychopathologies and the crimes committed by terrorist offenders. “Psychopathology of Young Terrorist Offenders, and the Interaction With Ideology and Grievances” in Frontiers in Psychiatry. Quote from the article’s abstract: “We found that most adult and young Jihadist terrorist offenders with a forensic mental health report had psychopathological problems. Most frequently found were symptoms and traits of intellectual disability disorders, depressive disorders, psychotic/schizophrenic disorders, substance use disorders, and personality disorders. “
j watson
1 year ago
There are many who can’t handle complexity. They yearn for simple explanations and simple solutions. It’s the plague of so much Populism – the idea that solutions are simple if only a Politician made a simple decision etc. It infantilises. Like the child who reads comics and wants things to be simple between Goodies and Baddies and a Superhero to the rescue. But the thing is so many of us are susceptible to this yearning.
As Author conveys this is not to defend the murderous actions of terrorists, but to just dismiss as crazies unlikely to bring an easy solution even if makes one feel good for a while.
Like Leftist Utopianism, it’s always out there (just out of reach). If we only try a little bit harder, even if means bringing about social collapse and the deaths of millions of people. It will be worth it, so that we can start afresh.
Indeed. In general the lessons from the Communist Eastern Bloc period have been learnt worldwide, albeit with occasional regressions such as Venezuela/Hugo Chavez etc. In the democratic world it’s Populism that threatens – easy solutions to complex problems which then unravel, whilst in the less Democratic it’s the old playbook of state control/secret police/surveillance
Populism in the west counties as you describe does not really threaten (projection). People do not generally believe in easy solutions but good governence, something that has been sadly lacking for three decades. Why? It’s because once again we have a political class that seeks to create an Utopia that ordinary people do not believe in.
When the political (educated) classes are confronted with this, they can’t believe it, it must be some kind of “false consciousness” as to why their ideologies are rejected rather than their own cognitive dissonance. If the majority reject our beliefs we must find new ways of undermining this (ie democracy) through supranationalism, NGOs, Quangos and think tanks. Grievances of so called minority groups can be used as agents of change, a kind of populism to remove the “Tyranny of the majority”. History repeats itself.
You reach for the comfort blanket there AR of it’s all some form of conspiracy and some vaguely defined group to blame. It is exactly the point I made – looking for Goodies and Baddies, simplistic theories and inability to grasp complexity – so thanks for confirming.
Why do you always project and use fallacies, maybe because your arguments are so weak or non existent. There are no goodies or baddies just human fraility and plain stupidity.
Should I believe in the complex idiocy of Leftist ideologies that a better world can exist if the “right” people are in charge of it and that only thing stopping them is the ludicrous Leftist conspiracy comfort blanket theories of Hegel, Marx, Gramsci and Marcuse that it’s all down to a white patriarchical, hetronormative hegemony.
Fairy stories for deeply inadequate people who are easily manipulated into to finding some vaguely defined group to blame for their personal shortcomings, so much that they resort to violence, killing innocent people (including women and children).
Thanks for confirming your inability to grasp any of this. Well done.
You did not really respond to j watson at all but reduced those you disagree with to “Leftist conspiracy comfort blanket theories of Hegel, Marx, Gramsci and Marcuse that it’s all down to a white patriarchical, hetronormative hegemony” (misspellings yours). How did that have to do with his comment here?
What a sad joke of a response. You totally confirmed his generalization, for now anyway.
He’s done nothing of the sort, his comment is as banal as yours. He accuses me of reaching for some comfort blanket of a conspiracy theory and in believing in something as child like as “goodies and baddies” which actually appears to be his line of thinking. Technocracy = good, Populism = baaaad
These absurd ideologies exist and have been used to justify terrorism and mass murder. Perhaps you like to explain how”Populism” is a threat to western countries, it’s actually called democracy. Something that both the Left and Right have abandoned over the last thirty years.
Are there multiple people using this account or do you now refer to yourself in the third person? (“He’s done nothing of the sort”).
Democracy in its better sense in not an exact synonym for mob rule. A plurality or bare majority of citizens can’t (that is, must not) take away the liberties of the less-numerous. Let alone can a self-styled militia of hotheaded “freedom fighters” do so.
You see no potential downside to Populism and require that one be explained to you? Bolshevism and Italian Fascism were both forms of populism. What could go wrong, right? You may think those threats are mere historical relics, but I don’t.
I shouldn’t have weighed in on your dispute with j watson above, but you are also assigning me alliances and beliefs I don’t share.
I fully oppose technocracy and techno-utopianism. From inside: I live in Silicon Valley.
It’s a bit a hard to discuss things when we go to a contentious or accusatory place right away. I’m not excusing myself on that front, but I do try to do better. I’ll try to watch the doc. you linked to at some point, though I don’t have access to the hi-tech utility you mention.
If you have access to BBCs iPlayer you might like to watch Episode 3 of “The Trap”, an Adam Curtis documentary on how the decisions of technocrats put its citizens as risk https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00796hp
Maybe the illusion of good governance that existed prior to the last three decades has its origins in the vast increase in complexity of the world that we live in during that time. It was certainly easier to govern when there was no internet, no social media, no 24-hour news channels, no satellite surveillance, no identity politics, no human rights legislation, no climate crisis, no pandemics created in Chinese virology labs etc etc.
In those days easy solutions could be proposed by politicians because the problems were less complex, and those solutions had a fair chance of being at least in part delivered. I agree with JW that most people do still want easy answers and politicians know they need to offer them to get into power. But the problems have become so complex that all politicians are effectively ‘populists’, power-trippers knowing full well they cannot fulfill the promises they make. Hard truths and facing up to reality do not get you elected.
Winston Churchill’s adage that ‘ the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter’ is more relevant than ever.
I suggest half of those problems were created by technocrats, more out of hubris or less generously incompetence. Human behaviour is itself paradoxical, so any “solutions” will have paradoxical outcomes.
I certainly prefer democracy over ideology and technocracy as these will lead to corruption and eventually totalitarianism because of the perverse nature of human beings.
With you on the problems created by technocrats. But I’d argue we’re already living in the technocracy, the illusion of democracy is fading fast in the rear-view mirror.
Devil incarnate, or just manifestly unfit to lead a company, or family, let alone the most powerful country?
John Tyler
1 year ago
I don’t see the connection between the headline question and the statement beneath it. The answer to the question is a simple ’yes’; neither madness nor evil is unique to monstrosity.
Citizen Diversity
1 year ago
To get what they want, to get their Self-determination, how can someone violate their conscience?
A formula or arrangement of words will do it. Each a paving stone on the road to perdition. The road to Hell – the most solid and indestructible reality – isn’t laid with good intentions but with each violation of conscience.
The lessons of history? Faugh! Away with them. History is everyone’s servant before becoming their master and then finally their gaoler.
Meaning did not collapse in 1914. The Entente, and principally Lloyd George, created a new meaning that would come into being after the war. The Entente was just never good enough to live up to that meaning.
I’m unsure to what you refer here: “To get what they want, to get their Self-determination, how can someone violate their conscience?” Perhaps you refer to the 1948 expulsion point of a gun blade of a bulldozer of the Palestinians from land they had occupied since before they converted to Islam?
Last edited 1 year ago by unherd.com
Thomas Wagner
1 year ago
Shooting people in a shopping centre just for the hell of it doesn’t really count as terrorism because to be a terrorist you need a cause…
Which brings up the possibility that some demented idiot will shoot up a shopping center, then ask for bids to enable some cause to claim it.
Benjamin Fisher
1 year ago
I’m no fan of the US intervening in this conflict and sending military aid to Israel. And I certainly think Israel has done things worthy of criticism. But I cannot for the life of me understand how people who think of themselves as progressive or left wing bend over backwards to defend Hamas – a vile organization emanating from a long history of Islamist imperialism (see: Ottoman Empire and caliphates) with reactionary, antisemitic, homophobic, misogynist and racist views. I do not accept their premise that they are “oppressed.” This is not the same as apartheid South Africa or the proxy war with Russia in Ukraine.
Taking a stand against American or western imperialism/interventionism need not involve apologizing for Islamic imperialism.
“Taking a stand against American or western imperialism/interventionism need not involve apologizing for Islamic imperialism.”
Wait – Islamic imperialism? What about Jewish imperialism? Or maybe “imperialism” isn’t the right way to think about these conflicts at all.
How about this: no society is indifferent to its own order, nor to the structure of societies around it. Everyone believes “their way” is the best way. How should those competing visions be reconciled? (The Olympics, obviously.)
You definitely raise a good point about “imperialism.”
I’m not sure there is a way to reconcile these competing visions, which is why I think the US should adopt an anti-interventionist approach to these types of conflicts. It’s clear to me that the beliefs of groups like Hamas are not compatible with religious pluralism and a secular society. But that’s also not to say that Israel should escape criticism.
Ideally, I would like the US to withdraw military aid from Israel (and really from all international conflicts) and push Israel and Palestinians towards that oft-discussed two state solution.
Walter Schwager
1 year ago
To put all this into perspective: Nelson Mandela was a terrorist, according to that shining beacon of democracy, the USA, until 2008. Your terrorist is my freedom fighter. So who blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, as terrorists?
stefan filipkiewicz
1 year ago
… started with the French Revolution.
No.
What about The Gunpowder Plot? Anti-government terrorists.
The Inquisition? State sponsored terror.
Albigensian crusade?
Could probably go back further.
I suggest that terrorism has always been around, whether state sponsored or anti-state.
nigel roberts
1 year ago
The intro to this essay reveals it fatal flaw: that there is a widespread conviction that terrorists are simultaneously crazy and evil. There is no such widespread conviction.
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reminded of this analogous quote: “It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets” -Voltaire.
Eagleton always confronts and provokes his readers, and this is the least cheeky thing I’ve seen him post here. I kind of miss his sometime rollicking, sometimes dreadful humor, but the restraint is welcome for this topic.
States do tend to escape the “terrorist” label unless they are way over the historical or proportional top, or perhaps document their aspirations to genocidal holy war in a published charter. No state of any size or duration is anywhere near clear of blame according to any unyielding definition of terrifying atrocities. It’s always a matter of degree. I could list several contenders for U.S. federal or state terror since 1965, including Selma, Kent State, and Waco. A matter of comparative degree, as the actions of the Chinese, Syrian, Iranian, and Russian governments over that same span will readily demonstrate.
I haven’t looked through this whole thread yet so I bet one or more people have commented on this but: The idea that you can’t be crazy and evil at once is ridiculous. Is craziness restricted to those who are flailingly deranged and imbecilic? Was Ted Bundy unable to muster both at once? What about Idi Amin?
There’s usually at least about one insightful point and one absurd claim in every Eagleton offering. No exception here. I’ll continue to enjoy his writing while complaining about it too. I can do both at the same time.
Mike Downing
1 year ago
My comment’s been cancelled for some extraordinary reason. No swear words, no references to competing outlets so what is going on ? Unherd, I have indeed been made unherd.
Shrunken Genepool
1 year ago
Be quiet
David McKee
1 year ago
Interesting article, but Eagleton seemed to run out of steam, just as things were getting interesting. So, let’s continue the argument.
Nations are imagined communities, as Benedict Anderson famously argues. The terrorist imagines a community quite different from current reality: the Kurd imagines a Kurdistan, a Sikh a Khalistan, an Islamist a caliphate, etc. Is this rational, and are they justified?
Terrorism implies lack of popular support: if all the Kurds wanted a Kurdistan, then an uprising would happen – such as Greece in the 19th century. So the terrorist wants to provoke a backlash which would act as a recruiting sergeant. That’s rational. Ruthless, but rational.
Justified? Against a power that is impervious to popular opinion, yes. But if the terrorist’s cause is found wanting at the ballot-box, then no.
Rocky Martiano
1 year ago
One good point Eagleton makes is this:
“if you don’t see their actions as comprehensible from their own viewpoint, you are unlikely to defeat them. To deny that they are acting for what seems to them a good reason means you can make nothing at all of what they do. It is just a piece of nonsense or absurdity.”
Those who give unconditional support to Israel tend to blank out the historical context or have any understanding of why Palestinians resort to acts of terrorism to achieve their ends. This is not to justify terrorism, but without an understanding of where it comes from any long-term solution to this conflict is impossible.
Ah, your prejudice is showing. It would be difficult to know to whom you refer – if one thought you referenced historical truth. You’re not interested in the fact that Jews lived more safely in Muslim countries than they did in Christian ones. Or in the fact that “the clearing of the land of the unbelievers” in Palestine happened 1948.
Not a prejudice – I know that all countries, religions, regions have saught to evict ‘the others’ since time immemorial. The Jews had a particularly bad run – cycles of tolerance and extreme intolerance, whereever they went – and yes, they were often better off in Muslim countries than Chrisitian.
Religious intolerance and racial cleansing is out of fashion these days, though still all the rage in several Middle Eastern and African countries – the greatest of which is internal conflict between different Islamic sects. Take a look at the changes in religious minorities numbers, over the last century, in European, and Middle Eastern/North African countries. You’ll see where the cleansing, intolerance lies.
So the Israelis are allowed to indulge in ethnic cleansing because it happens elsewhere too? We condemn it wherever it occurs EXCEPT when it’s the Israelis clearing the land of Palestinians. And 1948 happened before all the events you seem to refer to. Hamas did not with the 7-Oct-2023 atrocity thereby cause 1948.
So the Israelis are allowed to indulge in ethnic cleansing because it happens elsewhere too?
Where did I write that?
In my view it is the Palestinians, and surrounding Islamic states, who are, and have long hankered after ethnic cleansing. The Palestinian and Jewish populations both rose for 30 years after Balfour, then the Palestinian population shrunk dramatically after the 48 war – because they started it and lost. It then rose almost immediately year-on-year to the present day. Arguably facilitated by the economic success of Israel. The current % of Jews living in Palestine is basically zero – a similar figure as in all surrounding Islamic countries (greatly down in every case). The current % of Palestinians living in Israel – 20% (1.6 million). And you say the Israelis are the ethnic cleansers! I used to think that anti-semitism was overstated, now I know it is not.
No! The later event cannot cause the former. That there are very few Jews in Muslim countries where they used to live well tolerated by their fellow citizens and governments is true. But they left AFTER the Palestinians were forced to flea Israel. So that Jews left the Muslim countries was the LATER event. The EARLIER expulsion of the Palestinians was not caused by the LATER events. This is some kind of time-travel impossibility, a logical fallacy. EVERY honest person and authority recognises the expulsion of the Palestinians as fact, and this includes the history departments of Israeli universities. You twist your beliefs to suit your desired conclusions. That some Palestinians remain in Israel is true. But according to the Jewish encyclopedia 1906 edition only 25,000 Jews lived in the then Palestine (i.e. the territory including present day Israel and the present day Palestine). Authoritative Jewish sources said that in 1948 fewer than 1/3rd of people were Jewish and that only 6% of the land area was owned by Jews. Now 95% of Israel is owned by Jews, and 80% of those in Israel are Jewish. Something happened, the Palestinians were pushed out, and the bills of sale are missing. These are plain facts.
You have connected a wide range of data into some cause and effect chain – where actually there are myriad causes and complications, not least WWII and the great economic success of Israel. Critically, I did not even cite or even imply any cause and effect chain – I simply pointed out that if we look at the numbers, claims of ethnic cleansing against the Israelis don’t stack up -there was only one year (1948/49) in the last 100 that Palestinian numbers in Palestine/Israel went down, and that was after a great War, which the Palestinians and neighbouring countries started (and lost)! Since that time (1949 onwards), and despite the trouncing by Israel in ’48, and massive Israel political, military and economic superiority in the area ever since, Palestinian numbers have increased substantially year on year to an all time high of 6 million.
Some basic facts: there were around 600,000 non Jews (mostly Palestinians) in the Palestine/Israel area in 1918. There are now 6 million Palestinians in the area – 1.5 million (25%) of whom are Israeli Citizens, living in Israel. There are also around 6 million Jews in the same area – about 200,000 are Jews ( 3%).
Population numbers have increased in many countries. My figures are correct.
In 1906 there were 25,000 Jews in what was then Palestine and what is now Israel & Palestine. 6% of what is today Israel was owned by Jews or proxies for Jews before 1948. Come 1948 and there are 700,000 displaced Palestinians and practically all of Israel is then owned by the usurpers.
Dumetrius
1 year ago
In this case, the fact that the leadership of those people have collaborated in that shackling and humiliation, by refusing two-state solutions over a period of eighty or more years, means that it is well worth examining motivations.
In fact, here, that’s the one thing that scores so low on comprehensibility. Forget about comprehending the acts . . . try to comprehend the simple fact of eighty years of witlessness.
If that’s not a ‘historical connection(s) between terrorism, absurdity and madness’ I don’t know what is.
The refusal of the Two State solution is bilateral – both by some in Israel and some in Palestine. When the Palestinians came around to the idea and their then representatives surprised everyone Camp David by accepting the Two State Solution it was the Israelis who walked away, proving they had not been negotiating in good faith – they had pretended to be in favour of something they never thought the Palestinians would accept.
The rise of Hamas as a major player happened *after* the Israelis walked away from the Two State solution, not before. Yet Hamas is blamed for this.
The idea that Israel supports a Two State solution is belied by the ever increasing encroachment of Israeli settlers into where the Palestinian state would be – the West Bank.
It now becomes near impossible for Israel to accept a Two State solution because of these settlements. And that’s why the likes of Netanyahu promotes the settlements, to make the Two State solution impossible.
Israel is happy to keep the Palestinians subjugated.
Now, was 7-Oct-2023 an atrocity? Yes. There have been lots of atrocities. The body bag count seems to me to be one good way of keeping score.
Christopher Darlington
1 year ago
Both sides have committed war crimes. Let’s see who gets punished and who does not…we all know who will not.
Mike Downing
1 year ago
Now it’s magically appeared? Are there dark forces at work or us this just ‘computer says no’ time ?
I think it is more a fact of “computer says no”. UnHerd seems to have IT problems. I complained several times and use Chrome now. Apple Safari doesn’t seem to work. But even with Chrome comments disappear and reappear.
They get “time-outed” for about 12 hours when 1) you use certain loaded terms (think politics, not profanity) 2) you get heavily downvoted in short order 3) some delicate person flags your comment.
Paul Beardsell
1 year ago
The idea this all kicked off 7 October is ridiculous. The Palestinians cannot be allowed to kill 7 Israelis for every Palestinian killed this year by Israelis prior to 7-Oct. No 7 to 1 revenge ratio can be anything other than an evil atrocity. That is why 7-Oct is an atrocity. Similarly Israelis cannot now be allowed to kill 7 Palestinians for every Israeli killed 7-Oct.
Where are the reports in the western media of the 200 Palestinians including 47 children killed by Israelis in the West Bank this year prior to 7-Oct?
1-Jan to 6-Oct: 200 Palestinians killed.
7-Oct: 1400 Israelis killed.
8-Oct to now, and to come: 10,000 Palestinians killed.
All three of these are atrocities.
The post hoc fallacy has an interesting corollary. Whereas that which occurs after something else does not necessarily make the prior event the cause of the later, what we know for sure is that the later event cannot ever cause the former.
So let’s be clear, the 7-Oct-2023 atrocity did not t*t-for-tat event before event before event cause the eviction of the Palestinians from their land 1948. The fact that the 7 October attack was an evil atrocity does not erase the context of the conflict, a people robbed of their land.
The rise of Hamas *followed* the rejection of the two state solution by Israel. So, similarly Hamas did not cause that rejection, but that’s how it’s argued.
Israel’s ongoing incremental settlement of the West Bank turns Palestine into an island archipelago unmistakably reminiscent of the Bantustans of South Africa, all the good land and water resources separated out for a people chosen by God, so one side does say. The two state solution, still the official policy of the USA etc etc, is made impossible thereby. And, such being impossible, a desperate people are allowed nothing but despair? Certainly the empathy they deserved before 7-Oct was not evident before 7-Oct.
7-Oct-2023 is now used as justification for an ethnic cleansing started 70 years ago. But, again, a subsequent event cannot cause a prior one.
Give a dog a bad name. The dog was chained in the corner of its own yard by the usurpers of the yard. The dog was not mad before it was chained up. The now mad dog slipped its chains and attacked. It will now be whipped until it is maimed…
…by a civilised people who share our values. Shame on us therefore!
I don’t dispute that their has been a lot of blood spilled on both sides, long before 1948. But at this stage, what are Israel’s options? Pull back and await another wave of attacks?
There are options.
But first: The Palestinians are not responsible for the pogroms inflicted elsewhere in centuries past. It’s not disputed that in the centuries before 1948 generally Jews were safer in Muslim countries than they were in Christian ones. What happened in 1948? My main point (above) is that you cannot say that Palestinian behaviour today caused the ethnic cleansing of them 1948. That is the argument made by many: “Look how mad and bad the dog has now become, that’s his underlying nature, that’s why we’ve chained him up, before he misbehaved, in the corner of his yard, a yard we now occupy. He doesn’t deserve the yard.”
Note I correctly identify 7-Oct-2023 as an atrocity. There’s a string of them. The current one unfolding is the super-biblical 7 eyes for one eye revenge on the Palestinians.
It is not true that the *only* option is now to kill 10,000 Palestinians. Short term there are other options.
Long term let’s go to the Two State Solution. That means the removal of the Israeli settlements from the West Bank. This remains the official policy of the USA & everybody (save the Israelis). But official policy be damned.
You’ve greatly misinterpreted my statement about blood being spilled on both sides. My point was that this is not a black and white situation, a lot of wantonly brutal acts have been committed by both sides. You allege that their are other short term options, without citing any. I don’t see how the hallowed two state solution is a viable option, especially at this moment. Let’s just say it already: the Israelis want the Palestinians gone and vice versa. Unless one of these happens, the Middle East will continue with the endless cycle of war/ tenuous ceasefire/ war. I think that the best we can hope for is that Iran doesn’t directly attack Israel and World War III begins.
Last edited 1 year ago by starkbreath
Ted Miller
1 year ago
There is a very thin line separating civilised life and murderous, sectarian outrage. That line is being tested, in real time, here in Australia.
Yesterday, on just a 700-metre stretch of Wollongong Road, Arncliffe, 9KM from the ANZAC War Memorial in Hyde Park, Sydney, Australia, I counted four Palestinian flags flying from a mix of commercial buildings and private houses.
In the middle of this stretch of Australian suburban road is Arncliffe Park where, on 28 October 2023 (12 days ago) a Jewish man was brutally beaten by a Muslim group of “men” so severely that he was hospitalised for 4 days. He called the police but they were “too late” to save him from these thugs who proceeded with their assault even though they knew he had called police.
He is very lucky to be alive.
Just 700 metres from the scene of this attack in Arncliffe Park, is the Masjid Al Zahra Mosque, which is Shia Islam – the dominant Islamic sect in Iran. I live in this part of Sydney and I have heard not one word from the local Muslim community denouncing this anti-Semitic violence.
Local police are said to be “investigating” this appalling attack, in suburban Sydney. Arncliffe is a close-knit community, with a large percentage of Muslims. Many local people will know who was responsible for this outrage but there is, IMO, zero chance they will provide that information to police.
No, terrorists are not “crazy”, they are lamentably “ordinary.”
Paul Beardsell
1 year ago
Three errors I would like to identify:
(1) There seems to be the idea that a sovereign state cannot be terrorist. If this is true it can only be true by definition. States act by invoking terror in an innocent population all the time. So, let’s be clear, when we identify an organisation as terrorist, such organisation isn’t that because of a resolution by the USA, UK or EU governments, it is terrorist when it acts in a certain way. And such organisations can be states!
(2) When in a conflict one side does something particularly perniciously evil, that doesn’t make the other side good. Nor does it give the other side the right to act equally evil or worse in return.
(3) When the above two points are made that does not imply support for either of the two sides.
I have seen very few terrorists ever referred to as crazy, by either their supporters or their victims. And if we’re talking about terms, then with regards to people who wish for reasons of their own to kill me or people like me, I’d prefer rational to reasonable.
Hamas, and other terrorists are entirely rational. Their goals are stated and public knowledge, and their behaviour entirely in keeping with those goals. They may have miscalculated with the recent outrage, but they may on the other hand have figured their deaths were worth it as part of some larger game to achieve their goals. I think we in the secular West don’t really get that they genuinely believe that heaven awaits them, and it’s better than the life they lead.
What I think the response to this should be is whether we are confident in our own morality, our customs and beliefs, our history and civilisation, to know good from evil, and the understandings regarding those concepts that have underpinned our development to this day. If we can say we know that, then we can decide that their behaviour is evil, and act accordingly. Or failing that, be clear-sighted enough to know that, given what they believe and want, that their continued existence is an existential threat, a mortal threat to our societies and to our children. And act accordingly.
I’m of the opinion that Israel is a sort of pit canary for Western civilization as a whole. An outpost of Judeo-Christian values planted in unpromising ground but surviving and thriving nonetheless. Mine is of course just one opinion among many, and it’s a clumsy metaphor perhaps, but I think while Israel and its values stand, then so can ours. If we let this death cult overrun it because we don’t have the stomach to fight, or worse still to watch someone else (the IDF) do it for us, then we too are done for, and probably in a generation or two.
They say evil only prevails when good does nothing. So are we good? Are our values sound? There are people who wish to kill us, and those who share our values. If we are good, and someone is murderously opposed to us, driven to murderous frenzies of rape and baby-killing, then whether they are evil or not is semantics. And we’d better not think they’re crazy, or we’ll underestimate them.
Very well described. Eagleton sets up a straw man with his “crazy” argument, once again misjudging the innate capacity of citizens (or the vast majority) to understand the rationale behind those who commit atrocities.
I do not know. What would you call a belief that if you die a martyr you get 12 virgins and an everlasting fountain of wine that does not give you a hangover
I’d call it misogynist.
Did I say whether the virgins would be men or women?
You know, I do wonder what’s in it for the female suicide bombers. I mean, you blow yourself up in a crowded market place and for what? A dozen men who don’t have a clue in bed…
I’ve every sympathy for them wanting the booze though after a life of an islamist wife. The miracle is they can wait that long.
You’ve got me there.
But if Muslim men were enlightened fellows would they not also prefer experience partners
People are people. We are much more similar to the Palestinians than I think you allow.
I would call your citing of Paradise’s rewards as a false characterisation. Most Palestinians are not fundamentalist Muslims. There are many many Christians who believe similar nonsense. The idea that one has to be fundamentalist Muslim to be upset about losing one’s homeland by being driven off it by force by those who have immigrated en masse should be tested in some Western country. No people would react with equanimity. I cite Dresden and Hiroshima and the carpet bombing of Afghanistan as examples of how people of my culture chose to react when threatened. Oh, but that’s different? Is killing people remotely with a drone or a bomb more or less moral than slitting their throats in person?
I question the exchange rate. Why is it always so egregiously high? 7:1 or worse.
The 1400 killed 7-Oct-2023 is said to be in retaliatory revenge for the 200+ Palestinians including 47 children killed by Israeli settlers and army this year before that date. And now today 10,000 are said to have died in Gaza. If that’s an exaggeration as some do claim we nevertheless know it will soon be 10,000.
200 x 7 = 1400
1400 x 7 = 10,000
People are people. We are much more similar to the Palestinians than I think you allow.
There are some objective facts in international relations and law. one type of fact is geopolitical: which people/state is close to another. Another fact is being a member of the international society of states: the society is a rarefied club. It has about 200 members. Israel is a member. Thereby, it has rights and duties. One of the key rights is the right to defend itself. Hamas is not a member of that society. it does not have the right to make war. It may claim that it does. It does not. So what does it do when it uses violence, in the case of October 7, extreme violence. The correct term is terror. it uses terror. Terror is a means of war. So it is at war, but it does not have the right to wage wars. Its key assertion is the liquidation of Israel.
The conclusion is simple: Hamas is a terrorist organisation. Terrorist organisations are proscribed by the society of states. Any state or organisation which supports a terrorist organisation by word or by deed is acting outside the bounds of international law. There is only one possible outcome here: Hamas must be liquidated.
Hamas is also a political party that’s rise closely mirrors every other Authoritarian State Apparatus that fills a vacuum after Socialism fails. Palestine like Weimar was a Socialist State.
The pattern repeats without exception everywhere Marxist/Leninist parties seize power and destabilize everything. After the chaos and regardless of whether the Marxist Leninist Ideology is replaced; the State seizes control of the means of Production and imposes something akin to martial law.
If the West is going to intervene to “aid” destabilized countries, it needs to stop propping up Socialist replacement parties because the same pattern of Famine Economics followed by Military Dictatorships will just repeat itself.
I might agree with you about Marxist-Leninism, but Hamas has absolutely nothing to do with socialism. Why is it that some people on this forum seem to be able to only hold onto one concept?
I didn’t say they did. I said they filled a vacuum. Read about Fatah, the party in power before Hamas. It’s a member party in the Socialist International.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67083432.amp
“It’s simply not the BBC’s job to tell people who to support and who to condemn – who are the od guys and who are the bad guys.”
Oh really, because it seems like the BBC has drawn a pretty clear line that defines Western Progressives= Good and Western Conservatives= Bad.
The reason why bbc and cbc and the like don’t call them terrorists is because it’s too close to the home of what they do. I don’t mean the act, I mean the propulsion of the act into the consciousness of the populations. If they don’t want to call them terrorists, why don’t they embed journalists in the units?
Christian values killed 6 million Jews, homosexuals, Romas, and others. Christians killed 8,000 defenseless Muslims in Srebenica. Christian Falangists, under the protection of the Israeli army, killed 3,000 defenseless Palestinians in Shara and Shatila. And that is just a recent sampling, without going back to other examples of Christian genocide. It always amazes me that some brainless upper class twits manage to invoke Western and Christian moral superiority without any regard for the historical record.
Israel, from a threatened small settlement, has become an arrogant, racist, militaristic and theocratic aparheid society where recently half its population demonstrated against the government.
The only hope is that younger, more educated voters are more critical and rejecting the knee-jerk pro-Israeli attitudes of their seniors. We cannot convince our opponents – we can just wait for them to die out.
Last time I looked, it was the Third Reich and N@zis who killed 6M Jews plus many others in the Final Solution, driven by a warped ideology that was NOT Christian. The N@zis didn’t espouse Christian values. They also killed plenty of Christians who opposed them, including Bonhoeffer.
And to call modern day Israel “theocratic” is ridiculous on its face.
Dear Communist Professor- To imply the Nazis were driven by Christian values is bordering on intellectual insanity. They practiced Theosophy which is an Esoteric Mystical Philosophy based on “root races.” They were also heavily influenced by Nietzsche who was obviously a hard core Atheist.
Why don’t you release your sources of these “genocides” while you’re throwing around Marxist inferences to the evil bourgeois class and teaching a class on Postcolonial studies. We get it, the society to which you belong are Oppressors and you are fighting for the Oppressed from within the Consumer Capitalist system that has so oppressed everyone.
Err…. I’m not sure that the core value of Christianity (“thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself”) was what fueled the Holocaust.
Is one not able to put oneself in the Palestinians’ shoes? Would not the hot headed amongst us (and it seems there are some here) not react similarly? The idea (among some here) is that the Palestinians were unmanageably evil *before* they were driven off the land they had occupied for many centuries, since before they converted to Islam, some of them from Judaism some of them from Christianity to which they had converted from Judaism. It is difficult to know what to do with the dog chained in the corner of the yard. Whose yard? I don’t wonder why the dog is mad.
(1) It’s too convenient and also too much of a coincidence to think that we’re always on the unambiguously correct side. I think too many of those who think we’re on the right side here are unable to identify anytime we acted improperly: There’s no questioning of how this ugly situation evolved.
(2) That one side is evil does not make the other side good.
one suggests a brief history lesson, as the ‘Palestinian’ of today was invented in the ’30s.
Even severely personality disordered psychopaths like Hamas et al,, who put Gazan children on roofs of buildings in which they’re holed up because they know that the IDF will not bomb them, and teach their little children to want to grow up to die while killing Jews, are rational and hate-filled as much as were the Nazis. The Nazis also terrorised Jewish communities and tortured and burned them alive. But few cheered on that Nazi barbarism and depravity as openly as is happening now in the west. I’d like to be able to wonder why that is, but unfortunately it’s as plain as a pikestaff …
.
Terrorism is the use or threat of violence for political ends. Pretty much all states use terrorism from time to time.
Monsters are not crazy, they’re “evil” or psychopathic”, and your rebuttal it itself a naive straw man, derived from the fact that you have no idea what you’re talking about.
In fact, terrorists are routinely described as monsters, evil etc – I listened to that narrative for the first 35 years of my life, on a daily basis.
I grew up in the Troubles and was subjected to a load of one-eyed, comically-biased piffle masquerading as the news, on a daily basis. The narrative of my childhood was as follows:
“Once upon a time, there was a happy land called Northern Ireland. Then one day, for no reason, a bunch of people became evil psychopaths and started killing people out of blood lust. We must never negotiate with these terrorists. The End.”
I’ve met plenty of people in S Dublin and in England who still essentially cleave to that fairytale.
Despite the angry voices commenting below, the author has a point. ***Officially, Hamas are deemed to be irrational, and to have no arguable case.*** That is why Sunak said there are “not two sides” to this matter. That is, the only legitimate position is to be pro-Israel. No other position is allowed – according to the Prime Minister of the UK.
So while the West may not describe Hamas as monsters, it very clearly views them as having no logical position, while also describing them as “animals”.
Irrational animals? Monsters?
Not much difference there and the author has a point.
“But you can explain why Hitler came to power, or why Boris Johnson exudes an air of entitlement, without justifying it.”
Hitler and Boris Johnson in the same sentence in an article about terrorism. Totally rad Terry! What a superannuated Student Grant (nod to Viz) he is.
I read the sentence and thought that it told us more about Terry Eagleton than the subject of the article.
Makes one wonder who’s actually in the elite group of people who are justified in having an air of entitlement, doesn’t it ? I’d have said “no one”. But Prof. Eagleton seems to knopw better.
He’d also do well to reflect on the fact that Johnson was removed from power in a quite peaceful and rather farcical way without causing millions of deaths. And accepted his fate.
It is entirely possible to be evil and mad at the same time, indeed if you study people with mental illnesses you will find it is quite common. It is possible to be so mad that one is incapable of making a moral choice, but this is rare. Combining madness and evil is not. Again, and again, and again we see that if you decide to cosy up to evil and make a place for it in your life, the evil will eventually drive you mad. But that just means you are now mad in addition to being evil. Becoming mad is not a ‘get to do evil blamelessly card’, as all the good people who are struggling with madness but not evil can attest.
Absolutely agree 100%
I disagree. I know of a once-independent nation whose desire for self-determination is so hard-pressed that it looks about to expire. It has suffered mass immigration to historically unprecedented levels: fully a fifth of it’s residents were born overseas, and their birthrates are higher than those of the indigenous population. It’s own government seems to be at ease with this, while being patently unable to solve problems such as housing and energy and cost-of-living crises. Its national broadcaster portrays this situation as being desirable, and never misses an opportunity to criticise that nation’s history and culture. Schools and universities teach values inimical to that history and culture; a young person in what used to be the conservative middle classes is considered deviant if they are not hostile to the best of what their country has offered, and few of them have an extensive knowledge of their country’s artistic and cultural achievements. Having voted for exiting a federation which it did not vote to join, the population were openly thwarted by a hostile political class who were utterly shameless about their contempt for ordinary people.
I don’t see many signs of this desire for independence and self-determination. To speak approvingly of such things is to be labelled as racist, xenophobic, or worse. I wonder how much more that poor little country can take.
Though clearly an apologist for Hamas and subversion generally, he makes the perfectly valid point that morality is the wrong lens through which to view the exercise of power.
Our choice is between the way of life we enjoy, built on Enlightenment values founded on broadly Christian moral concepts, or some of the others on offer. A theocracy, mafia clan, centralised big brother or any of the other semi anarchic offerings don’t appeal to me.
These other ways of life, in word and deed, despise ours, yet envy it’s fruits. We need to get more robust about defending ourselves.
I thought this particularly revealing:
“The ruling social order can take an onslaught on particular institutions; what it can’t abide is the subversion of meaning itself through some monstrous act of absurdity.”
Almost a definition of the progressive left’s objective in marching through the institutions.
It seems to me that the author is viewing Hamas and the other Islamist terrorist groups through the wrong lens. That is, he is viewing them through the lens of 20th/21st century western civilization. But Hamas and the other Islamist groups are not living in the 20th/21st century but in the 7th century. What Hamas just did was barbaric, but no more barbaric than the Viking raiders looting, raping and pillaging along the East coast of England. The west has advanced since those medieval times, but the Islamists have not.
What is particularly tragic in the West is the support for Hamas on so many University campuses and by so many groups, such as the LBGTQ+ community, who would be the first to be thrown off the roofs of high rises in Gaza. In other words, these people have no clue as to what they are dealing with or any idea what Hamas et al. are all about, let alone the fact that Hamas et al. do not share a single thought or concept in common with these do-gooder western, progressive, so-called liberal groups who have clearly lost their moral compass.
A baby born today and one born in the Viking era are identical.
The progressive view is Intersectionality. They view all conflicts as being between Oppressors and the Oppressed. And they side with the ones they see as oppressed. It’s a simplistic view. In general the darker the skin of a group the more likely they are to be viewed as oppressed.
But there may be a subtle distraction in the argument. According to Wikipedia:
If you regard HAMAS as a state actor rather than ‘mere’ terrorists then HAMAS are guilty of war crimes.
Absolutely no need to fret over ‘evil versus mad’ at all. Norman Geras used the term “diseased mind” to describe terrorists and also their apologists, who keep as quiet as possible about their acts of evil, or grudgingly acknowledge them only so to wax lyrical and angry about “colonialism” or “state terror”.
Terry Eagleton is just such a diseased mind.
Mr Giles is obviously into ad hominid attacks.
I’ll let P C Roberts describe what Giles stands for and is:
How much evidence is required before it is clear that Western Civilization is empty of integrity, judgment, reason, morality, empathy, compassion, self-awareness, truth, empty of everything that Western Civilization once respected?
All that is left of the West is insouciance and unrestrained evil.”
~Dr Paul Craig Roberts, former Undersecretary Of Treasury, Reagan Administration
The sooner Terry Eagleton gets to retirement, the better for whatever intellectual legacy he has left. This is a rubbish essay, composed in the classic ‘public intellectual’ fashion – a helter-skelter combination of cliches, truisms, sweeping judgments, unfounded assertions, and idiosyncratic asides.
Eagleton’s worry about the distinction between evil and madness, or between terrorism and ‘collateral damage’, would (you’d think) remind him of Wittgenstein. When you seek to understand what a word means, you must remember that examples come before definitions, not the other way round. And so, too, do our moral categories exist to serve our moral judgments, not the other way round.
Hamas perfectly captures both madness and evil, both unauthorized terrorism and authorized mayhem. Whether you call them evil or mad, terrorists or soldiers, is irrelevant. They must be stopped, dead or alive.
And Israel will execute their 2.3million hostages in Gaza at 1000 per day until Hamas stops.
A post worthy of Terry Eagleton.
If you have an argument make it.
Sure: people living in Gaza are not hostages (nor are they prisoners). Or if you want to be witty, they are hostages of Hamas not of Israel. If Gazans support Hamas’ terrorist actions, then they rightly bear some (some) responsibility for them. If they do not support Hamas’ terrorist actions, they must remove Hamas and convince Israel they’ll stop attacking it. Where is the evidence of Gazans rebelling against their evil overlords?
According to PCPSR, the vast majority of Gazans (70-80%) have no interest in emigrating from Gaza and support Hamas and its violence towards Israel. The responsibility for the death of Gazan children lies at the feet of Gazan parents who have put them in harms way and have taught them to hate Jews and to support and glorify terrorists killing Jews.
This entire debate reminds me of Genesis 18:16… just how many righteous Gazans must we identify, to let the evil ones off the hook?
Seems a bit late in history to “go biblical” in such an ancient, Sodom and Gomorrah kind of way.
So the responsibility for the deaths of thousands of children killed within a few weeks in no way lies with those who kill them?
That sounds perilously close to the sick jihadist and far/fashionable leftist claim that Israel bears the sole responsibility for the slaughter and hostage-seizure of its innocents on 10/7.
“So the responsibility for the deaths of thousands of children killed within a few weeks in no way lies with those who kill them?”
“In no way”? I don’t know what that means. “In what way” are you talking about?
In this debate, when in doubt, point to the children. Not the Jewish children who are intentionally attacked by Hamas, but the Palestinians children – who are deliberately put in harms’ way by Hamas. Yet somehow this is Israel’s fault. I don’t get it.
Since I know you are not dumb, I can only conclude you are being deliberately dishonest or obtuse.
If someone puts children in harms way and you still pull the trigger, is that avoidable death in no way your fault? Too complex or subtle for ya’?
Morality and needful restraint don’t disappear during wartime. Quite the opposite. You must know that. It has to do with degree and balance, things which you seem to purposely ignore here.
Weird – I was going to say you were the one being deliberately obtuse. The point of asking what “in some way” means is that I have no idea how to answer the question without knowing what you think is at stake in it.
I am sure Israeli generals ordering attacks to protect their own children will be very sad if those attacks kill Palestinian children. But they would be even sadder if they did not order those attacks, resulting in more deaths of Israeli children.
Why is it that the “but the children!” side of this debate never can quite articulate what Israel is supposed to do? It’s like Hamas’ immoral tactic of deliberately endangering Gazan children is a ‘get out of jail free’ card for their immoral tactic of deliberately killing Israeli children. According to my moral intuitions, it is Hamas not Israel that has a callous, immoral indifference towards the lives of innocent children.
(“But the children!”)
Weird that you require so much clarification and pretend that there’s no argument on the other side of some black-and-white divide.
Allow humanitarian aid to pass through more freely. Don’t cut off water and power to the entire population. Don’t kill one Hamas fighter at the “collateral” expense of 20 or 100 onlookers. Is the Israeli military and the far-right government in charge being sufficiently mindful of these things? Were Netanyahu and his Likud party been handling things well before the 10/7 massacre? I don’t think so. What do you think?
I don’t pretend this is an easy situation that can be handled without major force, but it’s like you acknowledge nothing between non-engagement and indiscriminate destruction of whole neighborhoods.
Israeli children and adults will not be made safe when more Gazan kids are radicalized and both sides resort all the more readily–in fear and rage–to dismissing one another as infidels, barbarians, etc.
If it ever did: It will no longer work to obliterate a people and scorch and salt the earth afterward. People remember. Violence comes back around to who use it too freely, or with cruelty and delight. And to their blameless descendants.
“Going biblical” in the hellish, almost unrestrained sense you apparently mean is the exact wrong approach. Go New Testament biblical instead.
“Is the Israeli military and the far-right government in charge being sufficiently mindful of these things? Were Netanyahu and his Likud party been handling things well before the 10/7 massacre? I don’t think so. What do you think?”
First, thanks for your continuing engagement. Second, I think this quote goes to the heart of our apparent dispute. I have absolutely no personal knowledge of the strategic and tactical dilemmas facing the IDF. (I suspect you don’t either.)
What I have is a level of sympathy and trust with the people who adhere to Western civilizational norms – and very low levels of trust with the people who don’t. The Israelis have a free press, open elections, civilian control of the military, etc. Hamas on the other hand has no free press, no elections, military control of civilian life, etc.
It is obviously ridiculous to think we Internet residents can micromanage strategic and tactical choices in a conflict going on around the world. But we can identify the groups which are more likely to be held accountable, to follow the right ethical norms, to limit their actions as necessary.
To put it another way, the people who hide weapons caches in hospitals have not earned my trust when they report on civilian casualties from those hospitals.
I trust the Israelis to balance the imperative of protecting themselves with the simultaneous if secondary goal of protecting civilian Gazans. I don’t trust Hamas at all in any way whatsoever.
So, you’re in favour of the extermination of the untermensch. We’ve heard that before.
I’m in favor of the extermination of dumb internet comments.
“A helter-skelter combination of cliches, truisms, sweeping judgments, unfounded assertions, and idiosyncratic asides”…You’ve captured Eagleton’s prevailing approach quite well. But if you look past his anarchic heart, there’s some substance or at least “food for thought” there too.
It’s indeed true that behind the terrorist attacks lays a purpose and that not seeing it by animalizing the terrorists is an error that prevent us from knowing who we fight, but the conclusion that we should reach from that point should not be to put them as a symptom of a legitim problem that should be resolve (even if we condemn the means used by the supporters of the cause), but to disqualify the cause in itself, because the means says a lot about the very nature of the claims. The most revealing example is the fact that almost all terrorist movement has sympathy for communist nationalism or are linked with communist movement by a means or another. And the reason for that is straightforward: if the society for which you fight has at is pinnacle values of freedom and democracy you will never slaughter civilians, and if at the contrary you consider your cause as more important than civilian lives your movement has no moral justification at all and should by crush.
Hamas and Isis before them have taken it upon themselves to act as a decivilising force against the universal values they perceive to be assumed by the West. Hence they mobilise the force of the Ottoman Empire against Christian Europe, wary that using the Jews as scapegoats will always be popular in Europe too.
This is why the postmodern reaction (supporting Hamas ‘decolonisation’ barbary) in the US is most shocking of all. It speaks of a generation desensitised to violence, lacking any wider moral context and locked into the logic of these demented digital tribes.THAT is a form of madness.
There has always been people who enjoy inflicting pain on others, namly sadistic murderers. Terrorist groups including the French Revolution succeed because they leaders persuade the sadistic murders that they can indulge their joy in savage blood thirsty and cruel actions for some higher, morally superior purpose. Did McGuiness and Adams ever torture anyone to death, perhaps not; but they certainly enabled others to do so.
Thank you NORAID.
I read a book by Terry called ‘Evil’ which was very interesting and full of ideas, but nonetheless basically an Apologia for the horrors of Communism by setting up Hitler as the ultimate baddie in history and Nazism as the ultimate evil (something Stalin spent his life doing and which Putin still does all the time).
We’ve been stuck in this lefty good/ right bad dichotomy ever since 1945 and it’s skewed everything in our societies to the point that now, when the terms are almost meaningless, they’re still influencing debate and ways of thought.
Just like Judaeo Christian culture, they’re part of the air we breathe but we don’t even realise it.
Now there’s a bit of sentimental, pro-rebel, Lefty claptrap. Don’t they just love to lecture us on the “lessons of history” as though history were a gigantic educational project laid on for the benefit of Left-leaning professors.
Questions: Independence from who and what? Self-determination for which self (or selves) exactly? Post-revolutionary euphoria soon evaporates as the former rebels become the new rulers and the plodding, unglamorous work of administering the brave new society must proceed. Then, predictable as nightfall, come accusations of a revolution betrayed. The remedy? A true revolution of course!
By the way, if anyone is interested, Anna Geifman in her two works: Death Orders: The Vanguard of Modern Terrorism in Revolutionary Russia and Thou Shalt Kill: Revolutionary Terrorism in Russia 1894-1917 provides greater insight into the cult of terrorist violence than the explanations (but not excuses!) of Eagleton.
Post-colonial revolution independent countries are doing quite well, thank you.
Not all. Some are just too stupid to know they are complete morons.
I’m not sure how important the “moral hook” is. Be it a junky or a professional criminal, the moral duty of the state is to eliminate or securely isolate that individual.
Give the junkies all the fentanyl they want. Problem solved.
Until the junkie is your child, sibling, parent….
Consider this: how many of the junkies and crackheads living on the street are there because they’ve used up the goodwill and patience of their family and friends? Here’s an idea: don’t let ‘child behaviorists’ and their fellow pill pushers get your kids hooked on Adderall and other drugs and maybe they won’t be as inclined to heroin use later on in life.
An idea that I’ve never heard of before, despite working in the field for 30 years; and I have not come across a single paper or research indicating a link. Like you though, I generally do not agree with psychotropic medicines for children. BTW – child psychiatrists (medical Drs) are the prescribers; behaviourists are psychologists who seek to improve the kids naturally by changing…..their behaviour.
What is an enormous problem is the over-prescription of opioids by American doctors, driven by Purdue Pharma – that has lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of ‘ordinary’ Americans – those who could well be your friends, family, colleagues, and who were ‘good citizens’ before the drugs, given to them by their friendly neighbourhood dr, took over.
Here’s an idea – for those types who are using up the goodwill of friends & family, those who are really far gone – the thieving junkies – just prescribe them the opioids they want. They are very cheap, and this would do away with their need to ‘find’ hundreds of dollars a day to fuel their habit. It’s estimated that a full blown addict needs to steal around £100,000 worth of goods each year to fund their habit – and you can add the police, and insurance bills on top of that.
Appreciate the rational counterpoint. I get the distinction you make between behaviorists and psychiatrists, though I imagine that there’s some collusion in getting minors hooked on drugs, you tell me. I don’t know if giving very young children drugs leading to them becoming junkies is so much an idea, it just seems like a logical progression to me. As for the thieving junkies, I feel no compassion at all. They’re a drain, an ongoing threat, they’re turning major cities into open air sewers, there are multiple accounts of assault and murder by some of them, why should the rest of us fund them?
Define ‘terrorist’, and define ‘crazy’. Not all horrific acts are designed to achieve ‘terror’, not all of those so intended are to serve a purpose beyond the gratification of the perpetrator. Of those that are intended to serve a purpose, the purpose, and its alternatives, define whether it is ‘terrorism’. As for ‘crazy’, is the person who thinks they hear voices telling them to kill more or less crazy than the person who actually does hear voices, but those voices are religious fanatics who themselves think they hear the voice of an imaginary ‘god’?
Exactly! The premise that “terrorist” and “crazy” are mutually exclusive is nonsensical. Crazy is not a scientific term, and it’s very imprecise. If we say that crazy is a colloquialism and synonym for mental illness, and a terrorist is a criminal who is motivated by ideology and political aims, I don’t see why the two cannot co-exist in an individual. Anders Breivik, the Norwegian terrorist who killed 77 people in 2011 is a perfect example. He had political objectives, but he is also a paranoid schizophrenic; if that isn’t crazy, I don’t know what is! I recommend perusal of the following journal article, which goes into more detail about the connection between psychopathologies and the crimes committed by terrorist offenders. “Psychopathology of Young Terrorist Offenders, and the Interaction With Ideology and Grievances” in Frontiers in Psychiatry. Quote from the article’s abstract: “We found that most adult and young Jihadist terrorist offenders with a forensic mental health report had psychopathological problems. Most frequently found were symptoms and traits of intellectual disability disorders, depressive disorders, psychotic/schizophrenic disorders, substance use disorders, and personality disorders. “
There are many who can’t handle complexity. They yearn for simple explanations and simple solutions. It’s the plague of so much Populism – the idea that solutions are simple if only a Politician made a simple decision etc. It infantilises. Like the child who reads comics and wants things to be simple between Goodies and Baddies and a Superhero to the rescue. But the thing is so many of us are susceptible to this yearning.
As Author conveys this is not to defend the murderous actions of terrorists, but to just dismiss as crazies unlikely to bring an easy solution even if makes one feel good for a while.
Like Leftist Utopianism, it’s always out there (just out of reach). If we only try a little bit harder, even if means bringing about social collapse and the deaths of millions of people. It will be worth it, so that we can start afresh.
Sounds like a definition of madness to me.
Indeed. In general the lessons from the Communist Eastern Bloc period have been learnt worldwide, albeit with occasional regressions such as Venezuela/Hugo Chavez etc. In the democratic world it’s Populism that threatens – easy solutions to complex problems which then unravel, whilst in the less Democratic it’s the old playbook of state control/secret police/surveillance
Populism in the west counties as you describe does not really threaten (projection). People do not generally believe in easy solutions but good governence, something that has been sadly lacking for three decades. Why? It’s because once again we have a political class that seeks to create an Utopia that ordinary people do not believe in.
When the political (educated) classes are confronted with this, they can’t believe it, it must be some kind of “false consciousness” as to why their ideologies are rejected rather than their own cognitive dissonance. If the majority reject our beliefs we must find new ways of undermining this (ie democracy) through supranationalism, NGOs, Quangos and think tanks. Grievances of so called minority groups can be used as agents of change, a kind of populism to remove the “Tyranny of the majority”. History repeats itself.
You reach for the comfort blanket there AR of it’s all some form of conspiracy and some vaguely defined group to blame. It is exactly the point I made – looking for Goodies and Baddies, simplistic theories and inability to grasp complexity – so thanks for confirming.
Why do you always project and use fallacies, maybe because your arguments are so weak or non existent. There are no goodies or baddies just human fraility and plain stupidity.
Should I believe in the complex idiocy of Leftist ideologies that a better world can exist if the “right” people are in charge of it and that only thing stopping them is the ludicrous Leftist conspiracy comfort blanket theories of Hegel, Marx, Gramsci and Marcuse that it’s all down to a white patriarchical, hetronormative hegemony.
Fairy stories for deeply inadequate people who are easily manipulated into to finding some vaguely defined group to blame for their personal shortcomings, so much that they resort to violence, killing innocent people (including women and children).
Thanks for confirming your inability to grasp any of this. Well done.
You did not really respond to j watson at all but reduced those you disagree with to “Leftist conspiracy comfort blanket theories of Hegel, Marx, Gramsci and Marcuse that it’s all down to a white patriarchical, hetronormative hegemony” (misspellings yours). How did that have to do with his comment here?
What a sad joke of a response. You totally confirmed his generalization, for now anyway.
He’s done nothing of the sort, his comment is as banal as yours. He accuses me of reaching for some comfort blanket of a conspiracy theory and in believing in something as child like as “goodies and baddies” which actually appears to be his line of thinking. Technocracy = good, Populism = baaaad
These absurd ideologies exist and have been used to justify terrorism and mass murder. Perhaps you like to explain how”Populism” is a threat to western countries, it’s actually called democracy. Something that both the Left and Right have abandoned over the last thirty years.
Are there multiple people using this account or do you now refer to yourself in the third person? (“He’s done nothing of the sort”).
Democracy in its better sense in not an exact synonym for mob rule. A plurality or bare majority of citizens can’t (that is, must not) take away the liberties of the less-numerous. Let alone can a self-styled militia of hotheaded “freedom fighters” do so.
You see no potential downside to Populism and require that one be explained to you? Bolshevism and Italian Fascism were both forms of populism. What could go wrong, right? You may think those threats are mere historical relics, but I don’t.
I shouldn’t have weighed in on your dispute with j watson above, but you are also assigning me alliances and beliefs I don’t share.
I fully oppose technocracy and techno-utopianism. From inside: I live in Silicon Valley.
It’s a bit a hard to discuss things when we go to a contentious or accusatory place right away. I’m not excusing myself on that front, but I do try to do better. I’ll try to watch the doc. you linked to at some point, though I don’t have access to the hi-tech utility you mention.
If you have access to BBCs iPlayer you might like to watch Episode 3 of “The Trap”, an Adam Curtis documentary on how the decisions of technocrats put its citizens as risk
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00796hp
Maybe the illusion of good governance that existed prior to the last three decades has its origins in the vast increase in complexity of the world that we live in during that time. It was certainly easier to govern when there was no internet, no social media, no 24-hour news channels, no satellite surveillance, no identity politics, no human rights legislation, no climate crisis, no pandemics created in Chinese virology labs etc etc.
In those days easy solutions could be proposed by politicians because the problems were less complex, and those solutions had a fair chance of being at least in part delivered. I agree with JW that most people do still want easy answers and politicians know they need to offer them to get into power. But the problems have become so complex that all politicians are effectively ‘populists’, power-trippers knowing full well they cannot fulfill the promises they make. Hard truths and facing up to reality do not get you elected.
Winston Churchill’s adage that ‘ the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter’ is more relevant than ever.
I suggest half of those problems were created by technocrats, more out of hubris or less generously incompetence. Human behaviour is itself paradoxical, so any “solutions” will have paradoxical outcomes.
I certainly prefer democracy over ideology and technocracy as these will lead to corruption and eventually totalitarianism because of the perverse nature of human beings.
With you on the problems created by technocrats. But I’d argue we’re already living in the technocracy, the illusion of democracy is fading fast in the rear-view mirror.
I’m in full agreement with you there.
I know what you mean. The way some people saw Trump as the devil incarnate is a great example of that.
Devil incarnate, or just manifestly unfit to lead a company, or family, let alone the most powerful country?
I don’t see the connection between the headline question and the statement beneath it. The answer to the question is a simple ’yes’; neither madness nor evil is unique to monstrosity.
To get what they want, to get their Self-determination, how can someone violate their conscience?
A formula or arrangement of words will do it. Each a paving stone on the road to perdition. The road to Hell – the most solid and indestructible reality – isn’t laid with good intentions but with each violation of conscience.
The lessons of history? Faugh! Away with them. History is everyone’s servant before becoming their master and then finally their gaoler.
Meaning did not collapse in 1914. The Entente, and principally Lloyd George, created a new meaning that would come into being after the war. The Entente was just never good enough to live up to that meaning.
I’m unsure to what you refer here: “To get what they want, to get their Self-determination, how can someone violate their conscience?” Perhaps you refer to the 1948 expulsion point of a gun blade of a bulldozer of the Palestinians from land they had occupied since before they converted to Islam?
Which brings up the possibility that some demented idiot will shoot up a shopping center, then ask for bids to enable some cause to claim it.
I’m no fan of the US intervening in this conflict and sending military aid to Israel. And I certainly think Israel has done things worthy of criticism. But I cannot for the life of me understand how people who think of themselves as progressive or left wing bend over backwards to defend Hamas – a vile organization emanating from a long history of Islamist imperialism (see: Ottoman Empire and caliphates) with reactionary, antisemitic, homophobic, misogynist and racist views. I do not accept their premise that they are “oppressed.” This is not the same as apartheid South Africa or the proxy war with Russia in Ukraine.
Taking a stand against American or western imperialism/interventionism need not involve apologizing for Islamic imperialism.
“Taking a stand against American or western imperialism/interventionism need not involve apologizing for Islamic imperialism.”
Wait – Islamic imperialism? What about Jewish imperialism? Or maybe “imperialism” isn’t the right way to think about these conflicts at all.
How about this: no society is indifferent to its own order, nor to the structure of societies around it. Everyone believes “their way” is the best way. How should those competing visions be reconciled? (The Olympics, obviously.)
You definitely raise a good point about “imperialism.”
I’m not sure there is a way to reconcile these competing visions, which is why I think the US should adopt an anti-interventionist approach to these types of conflicts. It’s clear to me that the beliefs of groups like Hamas are not compatible with religious pluralism and a secular society. But that’s also not to say that Israel should escape criticism.
Ideally, I would like the US to withdraw military aid from Israel (and really from all international conflicts) and push Israel and Palestinians towards that oft-discussed two state solution.
To put all this into perspective: Nelson Mandela was a terrorist, according to that shining beacon of democracy, the USA, until 2008. Your terrorist is my freedom fighter. So who blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, as terrorists?
… started with the French Revolution.
No.
What about The Gunpowder Plot? Anti-government terrorists.
The Inquisition? State sponsored terror.
Albigensian crusade?
Could probably go back further.
I suggest that terrorism has always been around, whether state sponsored or anti-state.
The intro to this essay reveals it fatal flaw: that there is a widespread conviction that terrorists are simultaneously crazy and evil. There is no such widespread conviction.
Reminded of this analogous quote: “It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets” -Voltaire.
Eagleton always confronts and provokes his readers, and this is the least cheeky thing I’ve seen him post here. I kind of miss his sometime rollicking, sometimes dreadful humor, but the restraint is welcome for this topic.
States do tend to escape the “terrorist” label unless they are way over the historical or proportional top, or perhaps document their aspirations to genocidal holy war in a published charter. No state of any size or duration is anywhere near clear of blame according to any unyielding definition of terrifying atrocities. It’s always a matter of degree. I could list several contenders for U.S. federal or state terror since 1965, including Selma, Kent State, and Waco. A matter of comparative degree, as the actions of the Chinese, Syrian, Iranian, and Russian governments over that same span will readily demonstrate.
I haven’t looked through this whole thread yet so I bet one or more people have commented on this but: The idea that you can’t be crazy and evil at once is ridiculous. Is craziness restricted to those who are flailingly deranged and imbecilic? Was Ted Bundy unable to muster both at once? What about Idi Amin?
There’s usually at least about one insightful point and one absurd claim in every Eagleton offering. No exception here. I’ll continue to enjoy his writing while complaining about it too. I can do both at the same time.
My comment’s been cancelled for some extraordinary reason. No swear words, no references to competing outlets so what is going on ? Unherd, I have indeed been made unherd.
Be quiet
Interesting article, but Eagleton seemed to run out of steam, just as things were getting interesting. So, let’s continue the argument.
Nations are imagined communities, as Benedict Anderson famously argues. The terrorist imagines a community quite different from current reality: the Kurd imagines a Kurdistan, a Sikh a Khalistan, an Islamist a caliphate, etc. Is this rational, and are they justified?
Terrorism implies lack of popular support: if all the Kurds wanted a Kurdistan, then an uprising would happen – such as Greece in the 19th century. So the terrorist wants to provoke a backlash which would act as a recruiting sergeant. That’s rational. Ruthless, but rational.
Justified? Against a power that is impervious to popular opinion, yes. But if the terrorist’s cause is found wanting at the ballot-box, then no.
One good point Eagleton makes is this:
“if you don’t see their actions as comprehensible from their own viewpoint, you are unlikely to defeat them. To deny that they are acting for what seems to them a good reason means you can make nothing at all of what they do. It is just a piece of nonsense or absurdity.”
Those who give unconditional support to Israel tend to blank out the historical context or have any understanding of why Palestinians resort to acts of terrorism to achieve their ends. This is not to justify terrorism, but without an understanding of where it comes from any long-term solution to this conflict is impossible.
oh sure – the hundreds of years tradition of clearing the land of the unbelievers.
Ah, your prejudice is showing. It would be difficult to know to whom you refer – if one thought you referenced historical truth. You’re not interested in the fact that Jews lived more safely in Muslim countries than they did in Christian ones. Or in the fact that “the clearing of the land of the unbelievers” in Palestine happened 1948.
Not a prejudice – I know that all countries, religions, regions have saught to evict ‘the others’ since time immemorial. The Jews had a particularly bad run – cycles of tolerance and extreme intolerance, whereever they went – and yes, they were often better off in Muslim countries than Chrisitian.
Religious intolerance and racial cleansing is out of fashion these days, though still all the rage in several Middle Eastern and African countries – the greatest of which is internal conflict between different Islamic sects. Take a look at the changes in religious minorities numbers, over the last century, in European, and Middle Eastern/North African countries. You’ll see where the cleansing, intolerance lies.
So the Israelis are allowed to indulge in ethnic cleansing because it happens elsewhere too? We condemn it wherever it occurs EXCEPT when it’s the Israelis clearing the land of Palestinians. And 1948 happened before all the events you seem to refer to. Hamas did not with the 7-Oct-2023 atrocity thereby cause 1948.
So the Israelis are allowed to indulge in ethnic cleansing because it happens elsewhere too?
Where did I write that?
In my view it is the Palestinians, and surrounding Islamic states, who are, and have long hankered after ethnic cleansing. The Palestinian and Jewish populations both rose for 30 years after Balfour, then the Palestinian population shrunk dramatically after the 48 war – because they started it and lost. It then rose almost immediately year-on-year to the present day. Arguably facilitated by the economic success of Israel. The current % of Jews living in Palestine is basically zero – a similar figure as in all surrounding Islamic countries (greatly down in every case). The current % of Palestinians living in Israel – 20% (1.6 million). And you say the Israelis are the ethnic cleansers! I used to think that anti-semitism was overstated, now I know it is not.
No! The later event cannot cause the former. That there are very few Jews in Muslim countries where they used to live well tolerated by their fellow citizens and governments is true. But they left AFTER the Palestinians were forced to flea Israel. So that Jews left the Muslim countries was the LATER event. The EARLIER expulsion of the Palestinians was not caused by the LATER events. This is some kind of time-travel impossibility, a logical fallacy. EVERY honest person and authority recognises the expulsion of the Palestinians as fact, and this includes the history departments of Israeli universities. You twist your beliefs to suit your desired conclusions. That some Palestinians remain in Israel is true. But according to the Jewish encyclopedia 1906 edition only 25,000 Jews lived in the then Palestine (i.e. the territory including present day Israel and the present day Palestine). Authoritative Jewish sources said that in 1948 fewer than 1/3rd of people were Jewish and that only 6% of the land area was owned by Jews. Now 95% of Israel is owned by Jews, and 80% of those in Israel are Jewish. Something happened, the Palestinians were pushed out, and the bills of sale are missing. These are plain facts.
You have connected a wide range of data into some cause and effect chain – where actually there are myriad causes and complications, not least WWII and the great economic success of Israel. Critically, I did not even cite or even imply any cause and effect chain – I simply pointed out that if we look at the numbers, claims of ethnic cleansing against the Israelis don’t stack up -there was only one year (1948/49) in the last 100 that Palestinian numbers in Palestine/Israel went down, and that was after a great War, which the Palestinians and neighbouring countries started (and lost)! Since that time (1949 onwards), and despite the trouncing by Israel in ’48, and massive Israel political, military and economic superiority in the area ever since, Palestinian numbers have increased substantially year on year to an all time high of 6 million.
Some basic facts: there were around 600,000 non Jews (mostly Palestinians) in the Palestine/Israel area in 1918. There are now 6 million Palestinians in the area – 1.5 million (25%) of whom are Israeli Citizens, living in Israel. There are also around 6 million Jews in the same area – about 200,000 are Jews ( 3%).
Population numbers have increased in many countries. My figures are correct.
In 1906 there were 25,000 Jews in what was then Palestine and what is now Israel & Palestine. 6% of what is today Israel was owned by Jews or proxies for Jews before 1948. Come 1948 and there are 700,000 displaced Palestinians and practically all of Israel is then owned by the usurpers.
In this case, the fact that the leadership of those people have collaborated in that shackling and humiliation, by refusing two-state solutions over a period of eighty or more years, means that it is well worth examining motivations.
In fact, here, that’s the one thing that scores so low on comprehensibility. Forget about comprehending the acts . . . try to comprehend the simple fact of eighty years of witlessness.
If that’s not a ‘historical connection(s) between terrorism, absurdity and madness’ I don’t know what is.
The refusal of the Two State solution is bilateral – both by some in Israel and some in Palestine. When the Palestinians came around to the idea and their then representatives surprised everyone Camp David by accepting the Two State Solution it was the Israelis who walked away, proving they had not been negotiating in good faith – they had pretended to be in favour of something they never thought the Palestinians would accept.
The rise of Hamas as a major player happened *after* the Israelis walked away from the Two State solution, not before. Yet Hamas is blamed for this.
The idea that Israel supports a Two State solution is belied by the ever increasing encroachment of Israeli settlers into where the Palestinian state would be – the West Bank.
It now becomes near impossible for Israel to accept a Two State solution because of these settlements. And that’s why the likes of Netanyahu promotes the settlements, to make the Two State solution impossible.
Israel is happy to keep the Palestinians subjugated.
Now, was 7-Oct-2023 an atrocity? Yes. There have been lots of atrocities. The body bag count seems to me to be one good way of keeping score.
Both sides have committed war crimes. Let’s see who gets punished and who does not…we all know who will not.
Now it’s magically appeared? Are there dark forces at work or us this just ‘computer says no’ time ?
I think it is more a fact of “computer says no”. UnHerd seems to have IT problems. I complained several times and use Chrome now. Apple Safari doesn’t seem to work. But even with Chrome comments disappear and reappear.
They get “time-outed” for about 12 hours when 1) you use certain loaded terms (think politics, not profanity) 2) you get heavily downvoted in short order 3) some delicate person flags your comment.
The idea this all kicked off 7 October is ridiculous. The Palestinians cannot be allowed to kill 7 Israelis for every Palestinian killed this year by Israelis prior to 7-Oct. No 7 to 1 revenge ratio can be anything other than an evil atrocity. That is why 7-Oct is an atrocity. Similarly Israelis cannot now be allowed to kill 7 Palestinians for every Israeli killed 7-Oct.
Where are the reports in the western media of the 200 Palestinians including 47 children killed by Israelis in the West Bank this year prior to 7-Oct?
1-Jan to 6-Oct: 200 Palestinians killed.
7-Oct: 1400 Israelis killed.
8-Oct to now, and to come: 10,000 Palestinians killed.
All three of these are atrocities.
The post hoc fallacy has an interesting corollary. Whereas that which occurs after something else does not necessarily make the prior event the cause of the later, what we know for sure is that the later event cannot ever cause the former.
So let’s be clear, the 7-Oct-2023 atrocity did not t*t-for-tat event before event before event cause the eviction of the Palestinians from their land 1948. The fact that the 7 October attack was an evil atrocity does not erase the context of the conflict, a people robbed of their land.
The rise of Hamas *followed* the rejection of the two state solution by Israel. So, similarly Hamas did not cause that rejection, but that’s how it’s argued.
Israel’s ongoing incremental settlement of the West Bank turns Palestine into an island archipelago unmistakably reminiscent of the Bantustans of South Africa, all the good land and water resources separated out for a people chosen by God, so one side does say. The two state solution, still the official policy of the USA etc etc, is made impossible thereby. And, such being impossible, a desperate people are allowed nothing but despair? Certainly the empathy they deserved before 7-Oct was not evident before 7-Oct.
7-Oct-2023 is now used as justification for an ethnic cleansing started 70 years ago. But, again, a subsequent event cannot cause a prior one.
Give a dog a bad name. The dog was chained in the corner of its own yard by the usurpers of the yard. The dog was not mad before it was chained up. The now mad dog slipped its chains and attacked. It will now be whipped until it is maimed…
…by a civilised people who share our values. Shame on us therefore!
I don’t dispute that their has been a lot of blood spilled on both sides, long before 1948. But at this stage, what are Israel’s options? Pull back and await another wave of attacks?
There are options.
But first: The Palestinians are not responsible for the pogroms inflicted elsewhere in centuries past. It’s not disputed that in the centuries before 1948 generally Jews were safer in Muslim countries than they were in Christian ones. What happened in 1948? My main point (above) is that you cannot say that Palestinian behaviour today caused the ethnic cleansing of them 1948. That is the argument made by many: “Look how mad and bad the dog has now become, that’s his underlying nature, that’s why we’ve chained him up, before he misbehaved, in the corner of his yard, a yard we now occupy. He doesn’t deserve the yard.”
Note I correctly identify 7-Oct-2023 as an atrocity. There’s a string of them. The current one unfolding is the super-biblical 7 eyes for one eye revenge on the Palestinians.
It is not true that the *only* option is now to kill 10,000 Palestinians. Short term there are other options.
Long term let’s go to the Two State Solution. That means the removal of the Israeli settlements from the West Bank. This remains the official policy of the USA & everybody (save the Israelis). But official policy be damned.
You’ve greatly misinterpreted my statement about blood being spilled on both sides. My point was that this is not a black and white situation, a lot of wantonly brutal acts have been committed by both sides. You allege that their are other short term options, without citing any. I don’t see how the hallowed two state solution is a viable option, especially at this moment. Let’s just say it already: the Israelis want the Palestinians gone and vice versa. Unless one of these happens, the Middle East will continue with the endless cycle of war/ tenuous ceasefire/ war. I think that the best we can hope for is that Iran doesn’t directly attack Israel and World War III begins.
There is a very thin line separating civilised life and murderous, sectarian outrage. That line is being tested, in real time, here in Australia.
Yesterday, on just a 700-metre stretch of Wollongong Road, Arncliffe, 9KM from the ANZAC War Memorial in Hyde Park, Sydney, Australia, I counted four Palestinian flags flying from a mix of commercial buildings and private houses.
In the middle of this stretch of Australian suburban road is Arncliffe Park where, on 28 October 2023 (12 days ago) a Jewish man was brutally beaten by a Muslim group of “men” so severely that he was hospitalised for 4 days. He called the police but they were “too late” to save him from these thugs who proceeded with their assault even though they knew he had called police.
He is very lucky to be alive.
Just 700 metres from the scene of this attack in Arncliffe Park, is the Masjid Al Zahra Mosque, which is Shia Islam – the dominant Islamic sect in Iran. I live in this part of Sydney and I have heard not one word from the local Muslim community denouncing this anti-Semitic violence.
Local police are said to be “investigating” this appalling attack, in suburban Sydney. Arncliffe is a close-knit community, with a large percentage of Muslims. Many local people will know who was responsible for this outrage but there is, IMO, zero chance they will provide that information to police.
No, terrorists are not “crazy”, they are lamentably “ordinary.”
Three errors I would like to identify:
(1) There seems to be the idea that a sovereign state cannot be terrorist. If this is true it can only be true by definition. States act by invoking terror in an innocent population all the time. So, let’s be clear, when we identify an organisation as terrorist, such organisation isn’t that because of a resolution by the USA, UK or EU governments, it is terrorist when it acts in a certain way. And such organisations can be states!
(2) When in a conflict one side does something particularly perniciously evil, that doesn’t make the other side good. Nor does it give the other side the right to act equally evil or worse in return.
(3) When the above two points are made that does not imply support for either of the two sides.